CHAPTER IV

THE BATTLE OF YPRES--FIRST PHASE

The main body of the British forces arrived in French Flanders on October 11. It will be recalled that in his dispatch Sir John French states that the movement from the Aisne began on October 3. Why, it may be asked, were eight days taken to complete this transfer if it was so urgent?[3]

[3] In the French official review of the first six months of the war it is stated that: "Field-Marshal Sir John French had, as early as the end of September, expressed the wish to see his Army resume its initial place on the left of the Allied armies. He explained this wish on the ground of the greater facility of which his communications would have the advantage in this new position, and also of the impending arrival of reinforcements from Great Britain and from India, which would be able to deploy more easily on that terrain.

"In spite of the difficulties which such a removal involved owing to the intensive use of the railways by our own units, General Joffre decided, at the beginning of October, to meet the Marshal's wishes, and to have the British Army removed from the Aisne."

Well, in the first place the withdrawal of the British forces from the Aisne had to be carried out in detail. To have effected the withdrawal in mass would at once have aroused the observation and suspicion of the enemy. Next the forces thus withdrawn in detail, and in detail replaced by French troops, had to be massed at a convenient place secure from hostile intelligence hunters. Finally this main body of the British army had to be sent forward to the new line of front as a whole. Thus it was that the 2nd Army Corps, under the command of General Sir H. Smith-Dorrien, detrained at Bethune on the same day, October 11, that the 3rd Army Corps under the command of General Pulteney detrained at St. Omer. These towns are some twenty miles apart. Coincidently with the detrainment of the infantry and the guns, the 2nd and 3rd Divisions of the British cavalry advanced under the command of General Allenby and occupied the little town of Aire, which lies nearly half-way between them. By this move a front was formed from near Lens, where the French line ended across the country north-westward to the coast. The gap, so far as outflanking the Allied forces was concerned, was closed.

In the latter part of September, as a prelude to their scheme, the Germans had occupied Lille. An occupying force which they had left there on their advance towards Paris had been driven out by the British. They now detached for the seizure of the city the 19th Active Corps and the 7th Reserve Corps. In the face of this overwhelming strength the British troops in Lille, part only of a division from Dunkirk, had no alternative but to retire. It was a bitter day for the inhabitants of Lille which witnessed the departure of these defenders, welcomed only a little while before with every demonstration of public joy.

Besides these two German army corps who, based on Lille, began at once to drive westward towards Boulogne, a powerful mobile column, consisting of four divisions of cavalry, supported by horse artillery and three brigades of Jaegers, crossed the Lys, and passing to the south of Ypres, made a dash through Bailleul for Hazebrouck, covering at once the flank of the main advance from a possible attack from Dunkirk, and carrying out a turning movement against such French forces as were then supposed to be holding Bethune. These German troops, the two army corps and the flying column, though mustering in all more than 150,000 men, were only the vanguard of the mass intended to be thrown forward. It is clear that their expectation was that of attack from Dunkirk on the one side and from Bethune on the other. The flying column advanced to Hazebrouck, and the cavalry occupied the Forest of Nieppe to the south of that town without opposition.

Meanwhile the Belgian army, which had evacuated Antwerp two days before on October 9, was on its way westward along the coast covered by the British troops under the command of General Sir Henry Rawlinson. All the probabilities appeared to be that both the Belgian army and these British troops would be cut off.

We may judge then of the surprise of these German forces when, along the line of the Aa, they came suddenly up against this massive wall of the British army supposed to be on the Aisne. Sir John French, however, had not transferred his army to Northern France in order to stand on the defensive. The wall of British troops was in rapid movement. On this same day, October 11, the British cavalry dashed across the Aa, swept the German horse through and out of the Forest of Nieppe, and drove them as far as the Mont des Cats. There the Germans attempted, at the end of a flight of some fourteen miles, to make a stand. In the attack upon the Forest of Nieppe the British cavalry of the 6th Division had carried out to the north a movement which threatened the German force from the rear. When this was discovered the German retreat became a flight. Reaching the Mont des Cats their horses were blown, but they were compelled to defend that position if possible because the Jaegers, evacuating Hazebrouck under cover of their cavalry, had thrown themselves into Meteren and Bailleul. This cavalry fight, in which on both sides more than 20,000 men took part, though relatively, perhaps, but one of the minor episodes of the war, was, in fact, of its kind colossal. It was a clash of sabre against sabre, man to man. In numbers the Germans had an advantage of about three to two, and that advantage ought to have been decisive, but apart from the fact that their mounts hard ridden across country, were winded, the superiority of the British was so marked that they had not hesitated earlier in the campaign, and with success, to attack the German horse when the enemy had a proportion of two to one. In cavalry fighting skill, spirit and cohesion count for more than numbers.

The defeat of the German cavalry in this action was decisive. It was not that they did not fight with bravery. They did. Broken in one charge they were rallied by their officers for another. Some four times in succession in the battle among the hills they attempted to recover.

While the British cavalry were carrying out their brilliant drive, the 3rd Army Corps advanced east from St. Omer to Hazebrouck. In the meantime also the 2nd Corps had taken up a line of positions along the canal from Bethune to Aire. Next day (October 12) the 2nd Corps moved forward to Merville, a little town south-east of the Forest of Nieppe.

The plan of the British operations may be briefly stated. Taking Givenchy, a village two miles west of La Bassee, as the pivoting point, it was intended to swing the line round until it reached the Lys. In this movement the British front would swing through a quarter circle, that is, from north-west to north-east. The British cavalry would be on the outer, or left wing; the inner, or right wing, at Givenchy would be hinged on to the French positions. In this way the country between the Lys and the sea would be cleared of the enemy, and the Allies envelopment carried from Givenchy past Lille, so that that important place could no longer be used by the Germans as a base for overrunning the country to the coast.

There was a further aim. This was to seize, if possible, the railway junction at Menin, ten miles north of Lille. The move would both embarrass the German occupation of Lille, and hamper the enemy in any attempt to throw troops in force over the Lys.

On the other hand, the immediate purpose of the Germans is equally clear. Not strong enough, as they judged, to risk a pitched battle; their right wing exposed by the defeat of their cavalry; and the probability owing to this unexpected appearance of the British army now being that the Belgians from Antwerp and the British troops from Ghent would get through, they determined to obstruct the British movement by guerrilla tactics, and until their main forces came up to defend in detachments the numerous and almost contiguous villages of the country, taking advantage of its network of canals and railways, and of its tangle of roads and cross roads. It is difficult to imagine what is in military language called a "close" country more difficult to operate in than this, one of the most densely populated areas of the world. The German scheme was to treat the civilian inhabitants with ruthlessness, wasting and plundering as they retired.

Manifestly, the success of the British movement would depend upon its energy. The Germans were fighting to gain time. Not stopping, therefore, at Merville, the 2nd Corps fought forward directly towards Lille by way of Laventie, in the valley of the Lys. Laventie, about ten miles west of Lille, is the centre of a dense semi-urban industrial district. Concurrently the 3rd Corps advanced eastward from Hazebrouck towards Bailleul. Seven miles to the south-west of Ypres, that place lies on the southern slope of the crescent of hills already referred to. Some scattered advance posts of the enemy were met with in intermediate villages, and were driven in. The Germans had taken up a position along the ridge from Berthen, between the Mont des Cats and Mont Noir on the north through St. Jans Cappel and Bailleul, and on the main road to Armentières. About two miles in advance of this line they held in force the villages of Fletre and Meteren, which they had fortified and barricaded.

The British attack began at daybreak on October 13. It was a day of rain and fog, one of those fogs which, in autumn, cover these flats with an almost impenetrable mist. Such conditions rendered movement over the low-lying sodden country slow. On the other hand, as against the British troops moving to the attack the conditions put the German guns out of action, and, what was not less material, they concealed the movements of the Allied cavalry. For by this time the French horse, under the command of General Conneau had arrived, and the plan of battle was that the French cavalry should assault and turn the left of the German position at Nieppe, on the main road from Bailleul to Armentières, thus cutting off the enemy from Lille, while the British cavalry attacked Berthen. In the meantime, the main assault would be delivered by the infantry against Bailleul, the centre of the hostile position.

Throughout the 13th the fighting raged round Fletre and Meteren. Both places were taken. Meteren was stormed in an onset which at nightfall drove the Germans who were holding it in a ragged rout to Bailleul. General Pulteney decided at once to follow up this advantage. An advance on Bailleul was immediately begun. All this while the cavalry on both wings had been active. At daybreak on October 14 the British horse broke into Berthen, and despite a bitter resistance drove the Germans out, and began to roll up their flank on that side. The French cavalry had got astride of the Armentières road. Realising that their whole force was in danger of being rounded up, the Germans took the chance offered by darkness, intensified by heavy rain, to beat a precipitate retreat. When the British infantry reached Bailleul, they found the town evacuated.

These operations opened up the way to Lys, and the 3rd Corps advanced on October 15 to the line of that river extending from Armentières to near Laventie. They thus came into line with the 2nd Corps, which, driving the Germans off the main road from La Bassee to Estaires, an important road junction on the Lys two miles above Sailly, had pushed on to Fournes. At that place, four miles east of Neuve Chapelle, and not more than seven from the centre of Lille, they cut the German communications between Lille and La Bassee.

Thus, at the end of four days, the British were both at Armentières and at Fournes, within seven miles of Lille, and formed with Laventie as the base of it, a front of almost a right angle, the apex pointing westward. At the same time the cavalry had received orders to continue their drive from Berthen across the country and down the valley of the Lys towards Menin.[4] In those four days the Germans had been driven back some twenty miles. Decidedly the surprise provided for them by the British army had been anything but agreeable.

[4] On reaching Warneton, on the Lys, ten miles above Menin, the cavalry found the place strongly held by the Germans, who at the entrance to the town had constructed a high barricade loopholed at the bottom so that men could fire through it from a lying position. This formidable obstacle was encountered by a squadron of our cavalry. Nothing daunted, they obtained help from the artillery, who man-handled a gun into position and blew the barricade to pieces, scattering the defenders. They then advanced some three-quarters of a mile into the centre of the town, where they found themselves in a large "place." They had hardly reached the farther end when one of the buildings suddenly appeared to leap skywards in a sheet of flame, a shower of star shells at the same time making the place as light as day and enabling the enemy--who were ensconced in the surrounding houses--to pour in a devastating fire from rifles and machine guns.

Our cavalry managed to extricate themselves from this trap with a loss of only one officer--the squadron leader--wounded and nine men killed and wounded; but, determining that none of their number should fall into the enemy's hands, a party of volunteers went back and, taking off their boots in order to make no noise on the pavement, re-entered the inferno they had just left, and succeeded in carrying off their wounded comrades.

In these four days the British line had been pivoted round from St. Omer to Armentières. However looked at, the feat alike in its swiftness and its energy is remarkable. The numbers engaged on each side, roundly some 150,000 men, had been about equal. Reinforced on the way from the Aisne by fresh drafts from England, the British army had the support of that French cavalry which in combination with our own had rendered such brilliant service at the Battle of the Marne. The German troops were among the best of the enemy's forces, and the operations had shown that, even with the defensive advantages offered by this exceptionally "close" country, they were, on a footing of equality in numbers, no match for the Allies.[5]

[5] "On the 15th the 3rd Division fought splendidly, crossing the dykes with which this country is intersected with planks, and driving the enemy from one entrenched position to another in loopholed villages, till at night they pushed the Germans off the Estaires-La Bassee road, and establishing themselves on the line Pont de Ham-Croix Barbée."--_Dispatch of Sir John French of November 20, 1914._

An episode of the fighting is thus described in an officer's letter published in the _Daily Telegraph_: "The enemy are no match for us in this kind of fighting, and we enjoyed thoroughly the work of hunting up the Germans, whom we shot down like rabbits. When we reached the outskirts of the wood we came under a terrible artillery fire from the enemy's guns, which were only 800 yards away. I withdrew my men under the cover of a ditch.

"I took eight men and again moved to the outskirts of the wood, where I found a perfectly flat turnip field stretching away towards the enemy. About 300 yards out I saw a line of our infantry lying flat on the ground, and made my way towards them. No sooner did we leave the cover of the wood when the enemy's guns opened up on us.

"It seemed impossible that my little party could escape. Three were almost immediately hit, but we others kept on and reached the line lying in the open. Half a platoon were extended at five paces. To my horror I found all were dead or wounded except about three, who were keeping perfectly still. I found the Subaltern Lieutenant B---- on one knee, with one hand resting on the ground just in the attitude of a runner who is waiting the signal for the start of a race. He was stone dead. A shrapnel bullet had pierced his head.

"The man next him, who was badly wounded in the thigh, told me they were ordered to support the firing line, which was 200 yards ahead, and had only advanced 300 yards from the wood when the entire line was struck down as if by lightning."

As the Belgians had during the opening weeks of the campaign followed out a system of tactics admirably and skilfully adapted to the populous and settled character of the terrain over which the fighting then took place, so the Germans now attempted to resort to similar tactics. They tried to contest the ground foot by foot. They endeavoured to turn every farmhouse into a stronghold; to barricade with the debris of buildings every road; they threw garrisons into every works; they loopholed the houses of and placed hidden machine guns in every village; they gathered for a rally behind every canal. The country was swept by fire and devastation.

None of these efforts availed. Nor are the reasons why they did not avail far to seek. Such tactics were wholly at variance with modern German military training. The training aimed at a crushing movement in masses; the tactics to be successful, demanded alertness and initiative. So sudden a change in method and so complete a break with tradition meant, at any rate, that the mass of these German forces were but indifferent practitioners; they might know much of the abstract science but they knew little of the practical art of war. In one thing only were they thorough. They made up for their defects in practical military skill by their energy in plunder and destruction.[6]

[6] Dr. Ludwig Tasker, of the R.A.M.C., from the rear of the British line at this date wrote: "Some of the villages are nothing but masses of ruins. We are covering ground passed over by the Germans. They have not left a cupboard or a drawer alone. We respect all property, and when we go where the Germans have been we tidy the things up so that the place looks very much better by the time the people return. Day after day the same thing goes on here--fighting, fighting, fighting, collecting the wounded, and burying the dead."

They were opposed besides in the British army to troops with whom alertness and initiative were valued as among the highest of military qualities. Those troops also were expert riflemen. Though standing on the defence under such conditions the Germans ought, like the Belgians at the outset of the war, to have inflicted far heavier losses than they themselves sustained, in fact, owing to the sweeping energy of the attack, their losses were out of all proportion the heavier. Through the defeat at Meteren and the drive of the Allied cavalry towards the Lys, their right flank had been turned, and the result was that they had been "bunched up" by the British in the tangled industrial district to the west of Lille.

Bodies of them still held out at Aubers and at Herlies, two contiguous villages to the south-east of Laventie, but both those places were on October 16 attacked by the troops of the British 2nd Army Corps. This fighting went on amid streets obstructed by barricades, followed by hand to hand combats in the houses. The Germans had now brought up a mass of fresh forces, including their 14th Army Corps, additional battalions of jägers, and four divisions of cavalry. Notwithstanding these reinforcements both Aubers and Herlies were on October 17 carried by storm. In the assault upon Herlies the Lincolns and the Royal Fusiliers, under the command of Brigadier-General Shaw, displayed an undaunted gallantry.

On October 16 the Belgian army from Antwerp reached the Yser, and the British troops covering their retreat had arrived to the east of Ypres. Next day four divisions of the French cavalry drove out of the Forest of Hoethuist, north of Ypres, a German force which attempted to cut in between the Belgians and the British. Concurrently, the British line west of Lille was extended down the valley of the Lys as far as Frelingheinthree miles of suburbs from Laventie to Bois Grenier and Radinghem, the latter place not more than five miles from the centre of the city.

Such broadly was the situation. The German attempt to overrun western Flanders had not failed merely; it had collapsed.